Tag Archives: names

New York Times: Who’s on the Line? Increasingly, Caller ID Is DupedTelemarketers are faking Caller ID information with apparent impunity, so that people believe that the IRS or the FBI is calling. (Just like spam!) The FTC has just filed their first complaint against a company for doing that. The FCC wouldn't comment as to what they're doing about it.

Wikipedia: List of nicknames of United States presidentsJohn Tyler, Rutherford B. Hayes, Warren G. Harding, and Richard Nixon are the only former U.S. presidents who did not have a (non-derisory) nickname as president. ("Tricky Dick," for instance, doesn't make the cut.) President Obama does not yet have a nickname and, given how unusual his name is, I suspect he won't get one. The heyday of nicknames was the early 20th century, when a few popular given names reigned supreme—when three friends are all named "Michael," nicknaming is inevitable. The most popular names today are far less common than a century ago, making nicknames linguistically unnecessary.

W3C: Personal names around the worldThe World Wide Web Consortium has put together this great document about how people's names differ globally, and the implications of those differences on website and database development. I've long preferred simply providing a "name" field—none of this "first name" "last name" business—and this reassures me that this is the right path. Even folks not interested in website development would find the first half of this pretty interesting.

Gallup: Presidential Job Approval CenterThis is a great little web app from Gallup, albeit one trapped in Flash without an API and lacking the ability to link to any data within it. They've got presidential approval data going back to Truman. Interestingly, Obama's popularity thus far mirrors most closely that of Reagan.